Police: Fight might have precipitated man’s death

Girlfriend’s adult son reports witnessing argument hours before victim found dead

City police say an argument between a man and woman at their Santa Fe home Sunday morning might have turned physical and led to the death of 44-year-old James Fernandez.

A search warrant affidavit unsealed this week in the state’s First District Court in Santa Fe says Fernandez had been arguing with a woman he lives with, presumably his girlfriend, at an apartment on Camino Amanda and Rufina Street. Officers found him lying dead in his home early Sunday, with a bruise on his head and injuries to the right side of his face, the document says.

Investigators arrested the woman, Barbara Perez, on a warrant stemming from a 2009 drunken-driving case, court and police records show.

Police haven’t identified a suspect or charged anyone in the case, and investigators haven’t determined whether Fernandez’s death was an accident or if someone killed him. They are still waiting for an autopsy report.

But according to the affidavit, Perez’s adult son, who lived in the apartment with the pair, told police he believes an argument between the two may have escalated into physical violence and said his mother might have caused Fernandez’s fatal injuries.

The man said he arrived home around 9:30 p.m. Saturday with his niece and found his mother and Fernandez drinking alcohol and arguing, the affidavit says. At about midnight, he told police, the niece went inside Perez’s room, and he went into his own room.

About 15 minutes later, the affidavit says, Perez’s son came out of his bedroom and saw Fernandez lying on the floor. His mother was yelling at Fernandez to get up, the man said, and he told her to call 911.

The court document says a woman called 911 at about 12:30 a.m. Sunday to report that “someone just got beat up.”

The woman gave the apartment complex’s address before the line went dead.

A search warrant return of service form says officers responding to the call took swabs of blood from various parts of the apartment, including a blanket, carpeting, the kitchen floor and a kitchen counter. The document says police also seized a bat from a laundry closet.

A neighbor of Fernandez, who asked that her name not be published, told The New Mexican in an interview Tuesday that he was a friend of her husband’s, and he had told her husband he was from the village of Dixon. Sometimes Fernandez and her husband would drink together on the weekends, the woman said.

The last time she and her husband saw Fernandez alive was Saturday afternoon, she said, when he was about to drive off in his Chevy van. Fernandez told them he was taking his girlfriend to get her hair done.

“I feel bad because he was a kind and respectful man,” the woman said of Fernandez.